​To suggest that the United States policies in Yemen was a ‘failure’ is an understatement. It implies that the US had at least attempted to succeed. But ‘succeed’ at what? The US drone war had no other objective aside from celebrating the elimination of whomever the US hit list designates as terrorist.

But now that a civil and a regional wars have broken out, the degree of US influence in Yemen has been exposed as limited, their war on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, in the larger context of political, tribal and regional rivalry, as insignificant.

The failure, if we are to utilize the term, is of course, not just American, but involve most of US allies, who have ignored Yemen’s protracted misery – poverty, corruption, violence and the lack of any political horizon, until the country finally imploded. When the Houthis took over Sanaa last September, a foolish act by any account, only then did the situation in Yemen became urgent enough for intervention.

For a long time, the US seemed invulnerable to what even Yemen analysts admit is a intricate subject to understand, let alone attempt to explain in a straightforward manner. The US drones buzzed overheadindependent from all of this. They ‘took out’ whomever they suspected was al-Qaeda affiliate. President Barack Obama was even revealed to have approved of a ‘secret kill list’, and agreed to consider counting casualties in such a way that “essentially designates all military-aged males in a strike zone as military combatants.”

Shiite fighters from the Popular Mobilisation units flash the sign for victory in Tikrit on April 1, 2015 (AFP)

Reports have surfaced of serious human rights violations committed by the Iraqi government and allied forces in Tikrit

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Amnesty International said on Thursday it was investigating reports of serious human rights violations committed by Iraqi government and allied forces in the operation to retake the city of Tikrit.

"We are very concerned by reports of widespread human rights abuses committed in the course of the military operation in the area around Tikrit," the rights watchdog's Donatella Rovera told AFP.

Security forces backed by paramilitary groups and US-led airstrikes recaptured Tikrit from the Islamic State (IS) group this week.

A vehicle belonging to Shi’ite militia fighters pulls the body of an Islamic State fighter, who was killed during clashes with Iraqi forces, in Tikrit April 1, 2015. Reuters/Stringer

(Reuters) - The Baghdad bureau chief for Reuters has left Iraq after he was threatened on Facebook and denounced by a Shi'ite paramilitary group's satellite news channel in reaction to a Reuters report last week that detailed lynching and looting in the city of Tikrit.

The threats against journalist Ned Parker began on an Iraqi Facebook page run by a group that calls itself "the Hammer" and is believed by an Iraqi security source to be linked to armed Shi'ite groups. The April 5 post and subsequent comments demanded he be expelled from Iraq. One commenter said that killing Parker was "the best way to silence him, not kick him out."

Three days later, a news show on Al-Ahd, a television station owned by Iranian-backed armed group Asaib Ahl al-Haq, broadcast a segment on Parker that included a photo of him. The segment accused the reporter and Reuters of denigrating Iraq and its government-backed forces, and called on viewers to demand Parker be expelled.

The pressure followed an April 3 report by Parker and two colleagues detailing human rights abuses in Tikrit after government forces and Iranian-backed militias liberated the city from the Islamic State extremist group. Two Reuters journalists in the city witnessed the lynching of an Islamic State fighter by Iraqi federal police. The report also described widespread incidents of looting and arson in the city, which local politicians blamed on Iranian-backed militias.

Shia fighters patrolling Tikrit after a warning by Abadi against looting [AFP]

Unless Iraqis rediscover their common identity and the government seriously works toward that, victories against IS will only be battles in a much longer war.

Reports of fresh fighting a week after Baghdad announced its victory over Tikrit provides a portent of what may still be to come for Iraq.

The month-long battle for Saddam Hussein's hometown entered its final stages last Wednesday. But Iraqi politicians have done little to halt their mission to drive out the Islamic State group (IS) from morphing into a sectarian campaign.

Indeed, for as long as Iraq's Sunni community is exposed to sectarian attacks, the liberation of Tikrit will continue to ring hollow.

The US invasion of Iraq was based on lies and has lead to unspeakable horrors. It is time for accountability, says former UN representative to Iraq, Hans von Sponeck.The books of the UN contain no reference to "regime change", nor is it in the law books. Regime change is a term coined by western governments, especially the US, to describe a policy that has no basis in international law.

Externally induced regime change has never solved international conflicts. On the contrary, it has intensified them wherever they have been attempted. Innocent civilians are invariably the victims. There are many examples, with Iraq being the most prominent.

Following years of clandestine co-operation between US spies and Iraqi opposition groups, the US Congress came out into the open by approving the Iraq Liberation Act, which stated that US policy should seek to "support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein".

The act was signed by Bill Clinton on 31 October 1998. Five years later, in March 2003, Clinton's presidential successor, George W Bush, sent in the troops.

​Reports of looting and the torching of homes days after Baghdad announced it's 'victory' in Tikrit, suggests anything but liberation for city inhabitants.

Two question must be asked; exactly what liberation has been promised by Abadi, and what might the upturn of looting and public killings since April 2, reveal about the country's future fate?

To call these unfolding scenes of violence a retributive culture would wrongfully assume that those militia's are recasting as 'daesh' have committed a wrong - an imaginary which in fact bypasses the 'innocent until proven guilty' dictum.

The liberation Abadi announced two days ago appears to have translated for some as freedom to enact unthinkable crimes - some of which include public lynching of suspected, Islam State group fighters.

OK, I had some help from a duplicitous vice president, Dick Cheney. Then there wasGeorge W. Bush, a gullible president who could barely locate Iraq on a map and who wanted to avenge his father and enrich his friends in the oil business. And don’t forget the neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon who fed cherry-picked intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, to reporters like me.

None of these assertions happens to be true, though all were published and continue to have believers. This is not how wars come about, and it is surely not how the war in Iraq occurred. Nor is it what I did as a reporter for the New York Times. These false narratives deserve, at last, to be retired.

For too long, the United States and its allies have turned a blind eye to abuses by Shiite militias. With the militias now in the city of Tikrit, that has to stop.

In October, I met dozens of families huddled in the hillsides around Amerli, a town of some 26,000 people 110 miles north of Baghdad. They had sought shelter there, helplessly watching as their homes burned and exploded in the weeks and months after government-backed Shiite militias took control of their villages, after expelling fighters from the Islamic State.

What they told me bears striking — and disturbing — similarity to what is happening in Tikrit right now, as Iraqi security forces and Shiite militias attempt to retake the city from the Islamic State with the support of U.S. airstrikes. Iraqi forces and militia fighters captured almost the entire city by Wednesday night, as Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi arrived to cheer the conquest and Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi hailed the “magnificent victory” there.